Guild
For various information related to guilds, see Guilds (disambiguation). ---- A guild is an in-game association of player characters. Guilds are formed to make grouping and raiding easier and more rewarding, as well as to form a social atmosphere in which to enjoy the game. ;See also: Guilds category. =Guild Basics= From Joining Guilds on the official site (most of the info below is based on this page): :Guilds offer many benefits including free items, opportunities for groups, access to trade skill masters, quest items, and readily available trade skill ingredients through gathering guild members. You may discover that a guild greatly enhances your gameplay experience. You can meet friends, share adventures, and find people to protect you if you fight in faction versus faction combat. Typically, players in good guilds can go places and do things that players in poor guilds or no guild can't. This is especially the case at maximum character level (60), where the dungeons become very challenging. :Keep in mind that guilds are run by players and not Blizzard. The quality of the guild and the guild experience depends entirely on the players in that guild. Guilds can be a grab bag where you never know what you'll get. Every guild is different. :Finding a guild can be very easy. People often sit in town asking anyone to join their guild because guilds require a minimum number of members to create. However, finding a quality guild with quality members and leadership can be a difficult task. Don't be afraid to shop around. You can join one guild, try it out, then leave and join another guild until you find one you like. NOTE: You can move from guild to guild, but this will not enhance your reputation as time goes on. Sometimes the best thing to do is try to make your guild better and leave if that fails. Guilds will be more reluctant to invite you if you have the reputation of joining, taking what you need, and leaving for the next guild that has something better. Also see: * Guilds info page at the Official site Factors in Choosing a Guild Guild Size Guild size can be a big factor in choosing a guild. Guilds that invite too many people, that don't pick quality members, and invite new people all the time are generally less organized and less powerful. However, it can be much easier to find people to group within a larger guild. Smaller guilds are more personal. One complaint that players have about large guilds is that you often run into guild members you don't know ("I don't know all these people."). With a smaller guild there is much more opportunity to get to know each member. For that reason, some players prefer a small guild. Ultimately, the "Large vs. Small" debate depends on the guild and the members that join. There are large guilds that still remain very good. Leadership and recruitment policies are the main factors in determining how a guild turns out. :Q: What do you mean when you say small guild? :A: Most people consider a small guild one with less than 100 members. A guild with less than 50 members is getting really small, but most guilds start out that way. :Q: What do you mean when you say large guild? :A: Most people consider a large guild one with more than 100 members (usually more than 150). A cohesive, large guild can be a very good thing, but many large guilds have an active core and a bunch of loners. Active Members Guild size is less important than the amount of regularly online active members. Some small guilds have more active members than large guilds. A big problem with guilds as they grow is the abundance of alts that pump up the guild size, but not the active membership. You want a guild with lots of active members, since that increases opportunities within the guild. Ideally, a guild you join will have active members in your level range. Grouping Grouping can be a good way to find a guild. Team up with people and play with them for a while. Make friends with them and play together for several days. If they get to like you, they will usually want you in their guild so that you'll continue to play with them. After helping them out, inquire about their guild. Perhaps they may help you join. Reputation Do your own research into a specific guild. As guilds become powerful, well known, and popular, rumors about them begin to appear. Often when a guild member does something to offend a player, that offended player starts spreading stories about the entire guild. Jealous players make untrue generalizations about the guild and its members. Make sure you find out the real story on your own with whatever evidence you can find such as screenshots or web reports. Sometimes a guild may be good and is just the victim of a bad reputation. Guilds can be very jealous or hostile toward each other and thus make up rumors to hurt the reputation of the other guild. Or, perhaps, the reputation about that guild is true. Maybe the guild is full of troublemakers. Find out yourself. Large guilds who don't keep good tabs on and train their members to behave often suffer from poor reputations because you don't know what to expect from their members. Generally it isn't a good idea to join a guild that doesn't maintain some standard of behavior because your reputation can get stained by some immature jerk who isn't brought in line by guild leadership. Another point to takeaway is that what you do while in a guild may reflect on the reputation of your guild and may get you kicked out. You should try to find a guild that fits your play style. Its hard to believe, but some guilds form on the basis of being a bunch of jerks, but most don't so be aware of the image a guild wants to project. Diversity Although some guilds form based on specific race or class affiliations, like "Elf Druids of Elune", most guild have a variety of races and classes. The best guilds have not only a variety of classes (race isn't so important to gameplay unless you are hardcore RPers), but also many different professions and play styles. If you like PvP, you should look for a guild that focuses on that play style. If you're into making things, then a guild with a variety of trade skills should be sought. You may need specific classes to fill needs for doing quests in a dungeon or instance, so a guild with a diversity helps with all sorts of situations. Visit Guild Web Sites Visit the World of Warcraft.com Guild Recruitment forums. They contain links to various guild sites. You can visit their web sites, see what activities they engage in, and check out their rules. Quality guilds often have very good web sites. This can be a good indicator that this might be a good guild to join. You can also ask guild members if they have a web site. Typically, self-built websites, rather than ones hosted somewhere such as GuildPortal, will show more dedication and leadership. This is not always the case, however. Interview Guild Members If you find a guild you like, interview some of their guild members. Ask them how things are in their guild and if they enjoy it. If you're interested in joining, ask them who you should talk to. Be very careful when messaging guild members because their impression of you is very important. If you offend the guild member, they may spread the word about your offensive request (via guild chat), and that could harm your chances of joining. Be on your best behavior. Asking to join one of the more powerful guilds can actually be similar to a job interview in real life. Positive Guild Behavior Things to consider when looking for a guild: *Good Grouping One of the most important things you need is the ability to find groups to help you complete your quests. That's why most people join guilds. *Have good leadership A guild needs clear leadership and strong rules. Members need someone who can resolve conflicts and give direction to members. *Generous Look for guilds whose members are willing to share items and help you get things. You shouldn't expect free handouts for no effort. A quality guild will offer items and discounts to their members. *Fairness Some guilds have favortism towards their core members (usually a difficult to determine and amorphous collection) or friends or relatives regardless of their behavior. Other guilds only pay attention to their high level members and generally let the lower level members struggle until they make it to a high enough level. You should look for a guild that treats its members fairly and as evenly as possible. Since you will be a new member, the general pattern puts you at the bottom of the totem pole, so you don't want to be in a guild that treats you like dirt for no good reason. The best guilds help you level, but don't twink too much, so they know you're not taking advantage. *Spam Guild chat is a very important part of a guild. Guild members typically use this method to communicate. Find a guild that has good guild chat rules and enforces them. Otherwise, you might have to put up with a lot of garbage text while you play. There are advanced chat options that allow you to turn off guild chat. *Drama Item fights and guild members fighting with each other are common problems in guilds. If the guild has good leaders and quality members, these problems can be reduced or dealt with when they arise. Sometimes players quit a guild because of "too much drama." Games are supposed to be fun. If time is spent fighting, that's not very much fun. Don't be afraid to leave a guild. There will always be others to join and you can always create your own. *Mature Leaders When players get power such as the ability to remove guild members, demote them, and tell them what to do, they sometimes abuse that power. Find a guild whose leaders are responsible with the power they have. Conclusion Do some research, shop around, and keep trying until you find a good guild. Don't give up. There are good guilds out there. You just have to find them. Remember, you can always create your own guild if you want and make one that follows your own requirements. Leaving a Guild Type /gquit. (It is a good idea to let the guild leader know why you are leaving first.) Don't do this too much, because your reputation of guild hopping may catch up with you. Very few guild hoppers can have good reasons every time they quit. In that case, guilds suspect you don't do any research. Starting a Guild Talk to a guild master NPC in a major city. A charter can be purchased for . You will need 9 Players to sign the charter before you can turn it in and start your guild. Due to a bug, your Guild Charter must be in your original backpack when you give it to the Guild Master to create your guild. Choosing a tabard design costs , but the guild can be created without paying for the tabard design. Note: When signing a guild charter, once a player's character signs, no alternate characters on that account may sign. The charter must have signatures from 9 other Players, each on a different account. This is why people sometimes offer to pay to have their charters signed. Guild Types Guilds are often classified into types, such as Raid Guild, Family Guild, Raid-Family Guild, PvP Guild, Roleplaying Guild, etc. A raid guild, well, raids. Raid guilds are usually large guilds who may group with another guild or two to raid high level dungeons. They will usually have raiding schedules. Generally, a raid guild concerns themselves only with raiding, aquiring armor and weapons and phat loot. A Family Guild is a guild where the members are generally very friendly with each other. They are not usually very big guilds, consisting of anywhere between 20-150 members. The members are friendly, caring, and fun to be with, and don't really concern themselves with raiding. Now, Raid-Family Guilds aren't very common. They are crosses between raid guilds and family guilds. The members are that of a family guild most of the time. When the time comes for raiding, then they become that of a raid guild, but they still have the family guildness in them. Meaning, if you screw up in Molten Core, they won't curse you out. They'll have a laugh about it and continue with the raid. Roleplaying Guilds concentrate, fairly obviously, on roleplaying. Guild chat is usually in-character, and members are encouraged to behave as their character and adhere strictly to the rules of a Roleplaying realm. This usually does not extend to Party Chat and Raid Chat. The last kind is PvP guilds, and as their name suggests, are focused on Player versus Player and BGs. It's not uncommon for members of a good PvP guild to be the only players in the top PvP spots. It is possible to become Grand Marshal or High Warlord without being in one of these guilds, but it is difficult, as you'll have to contend with them as well as everyone else. Communicating in a Guild Most guild communication happens via guild specific chat. Running a Successful Guild Most organizing of guild members happens via the Guild List UI or guild specific slash commands. One of the most important aspects to any guild is the quality of it's leadership. As a successful guildleader, I've picked up on some good insight on this topic over the past few months. Okay so lets get this started: when you create a guild, you'll have ten members. I would recommend you be patient and actually find 10 people to sign the charter who will actually participate in the guild, not just people who will sign it to help you out and leave as soon as the guild is created. The guild charters were created for a good reason. Once you've got your 10-member guild started, it's time to get down to business. You should have already designed a general infrastructure and goal for your guild before it was created. If not, maybe now would be a good time to get some feedback from your members on what you all want to make out of the guild. Once you've got your infrastructure and goals decided and set, start informing your members of the rules and goals that apply to the guild. Use your guild message of the day to get out important information, for example: "Our homepage is @ xxx.guildportal.com" or "guild meet 5pm Saturday in Orgrimmar" Develop a means of communication exchange. The best way to do this in my opinion is to set up a guild homepage. You can do this with sites like guildportal.com which is what I use. It has forums, a bank page etc- theoretically everything you could need on a website. Develop your ranks and come up with the responsibilities those ranks will have and what each member needs to do in order to prove they can handle/deserve those ranks. Use your guild control tab in your social window to change the titles and privileges each rank has to reflect your decisions on the infrastructure. If you eventually plan to make use of the full ten ranks allowed to you by the game, you should set them all up as soon as possible; the all-too-simple rank administration system will not let you reposition ranks, so you have to rename each rank leading up to the new rank spot, then demote everyone to their previous rank. Do not promote people too fast, if you promote a new officer every other day, you're going to have 15 officers in a month. So be wary about who you choose to promote and how long they have been in the rank that they are currently before you promote them. I have people in my guild who have been initiates for months because I haven't seen any effort on their part to get promoted. Remember they should deserve the promotion, don't just give it away as an incentive for them to start getting more involved in the guild, that will only give them more incentive to continue to do nothing. The ability to promote people is a very powerful privilege but if you use it too much, it will lose it's power. On the other hand if you use it too little, people will lose the incentive to continue to try to get somewhere in the guild. Keep that in mind. When someone gets promoted, when a new members joins, or when a member does something generous and so on, make sure you give them incentive to continue on that path. I give out "goodies" like free enchantments to people in my guild when they are promoted to some of the higher ranks. Another VERY imporant thing to do is to congratulate someone on a job well done. Use your guild message of the day to say things like "Congratulations Player on your promotion to OFFICER!" or "Welcome to the guild Player!" Also if you have a guild homepage, it would be a nice thing to do to put these kinds of messages on the main page. Be enthusiastic. If you're not enjoying the guild, why should your members? Give your members goals. Give them a direction or something to feel like the guild is making progress towards *something* - whatever that something is, is really up to you and what you've designed the guild for. Empower your members. If you've given your guild a goal, then give your members the feeling that they have the power to get the job done. You can do this by reinforcing their faith in themselves, or simple by encouraging statements like "you're one of the best priests on this server, I know you can do it!" Have regular guild events. Try to have some guild meets or events that will keep your members feeling like they are part of an active community. Guild events are a good way for you and the rest of the guild members to see each other and more importantly for you to see who's needs help, who has what it takes to be a sub-leader and who needs to be told "don't do that." Make sure that you get the date and times of your guild events known to all your members via communications exchange like a homepage, guild message of the day, mail etc. Show your appreciation to your members and speak with those who are having problems. If you have someone that wants to leave your guild, don't let it burst your bubble. Everyone has feelings and if you speak to and (more importantly) listen to someone who wants to leave the guild, often enough you will find that they have a good reason for doing so. Finally, the most important thing of all- remember this, it's important...have FUN as a guild-leader! There are some excellent resources for Guild Leaders on the official World of Warcraft Guild Relations forum. The Guides and FAQs compiled there will be able to answer many of the questions you will have as a guild leader. Guild Tabards Each guild can have their own personal tabard which all members can wear. The guild leader designs the tabard for a fee of from the Guild Master NPC found in any major city. In some cities, there is a separate Guild Tabard Designer NPC standing nearby. There is also a Flash-based Tabard Designer online. A player can purchase a tabard to wear for from a guild tabard vendor, found near the Guild Master NPC. If you are not a guild, you may still purchase and wear a tabard, but it will be blank until you join a guild that has already chosen their design. The tabard is a visual symbol or badge of membership for each guild. The only purpose beyond looking cool is to display your guild or faction pride, otherwise tabards provide no mechanical benefit to your character. The graphic on the tabard is dynamic and will change to the new guild's graphic when you either relog, change continents, or enter/exit an instance. Once a tabard is designed, you must pay another to change it, so choose wisely the first time around. Advantages of a Guild *Having a group of people willing to help, and on later levels, being able to do high-end instances such as Zul'Gurub, Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Ahn'Qiraj. *Having a group of people to talk to socially (in the case of family guilds) wherever you are and whatever you're doing. *Guild members are often a more reliable and more kind source of information than general chat. *A guild bank lets you exchange items not right for your class or style with ones you prefer or simply help out those less fortunate. =Frequently Asked Questions= Q: How do I join a guild? A: Find a guild you'd like to be in, and ask one of its members. They might have to ask a guild leader (there can be more than one), and when they decide to let you in, you'll receive a notice that someone has invited you into their guild. You'll want to select "Yes", and that's it! Q: How do I start my own guild? A: In all the major faction cities, there's an NPC who sells Guild Charters. You'll need to buy one, and then have other players sign before you'll be officially recognized as a guild. Whatever you do, don't go around randomly shoving your guild charter in peoples' faces. This is considered rude and annoying, and you should be beaten with sticks if you do. Q: How do I leave a guild? A: /gquit - This removes you from your guild. Alternatively, you can also leave a guild by right-clicking on your name in the list of guild members that is shown in the "Guild" tab of the "Social" panel; among the menu options that appears will be "Leave Guild." Q: How do I use the guild chat channel? A: /g - Sends a chat message to all members of your guild. /o - Sends a chat message to all officers of your guild. Also note that you can turn guild chat off for certain ranks in your guild. Q: What's the deal with tabards? A: The tabard is a visual symbol or badge of membership for each guild (or overall faction in the case of the Honor System reward Private/Scout tabards). The only purpose beyond looking cool is to display your guild or faction pride, otherwise tabards provide no mechanical benefit to your character. Q: How do I add people to my guild? A: /ginvite - Invites another player to join your guild. Q: How do I remove people from my guild? A: /gremove - Removes a player from your guild. Q: If I have a tabard with one guild, do I need to buy a new one if I join a different guild? A: No. The graphic on the tabard is dynamic and will change to the new guild's graphic when you either relog, change continents, or enter/exit an instance. Q: Can a guild change its name or tabard? A: A guild's name cannot be changed. If you decide you want to be in a guild with a different name, the only way is to disband and create a new guild with the new name. Tabards, however, can be changed. The downside is, you must pay another each time you want to change the design, so choose wisely the first time around. Q: What's the deal with guild ranks? A: There are 5 guild ranks by default: Initiate, Member, Veteran, Officer, and Leader. * Usually, Officers and Leaders can add and remove players from the guild. * Members of the guild can only perform promote/demote/remove actions on those of lower ranks than themselves. * Only Leaders can disband the guild and promote players to the Officer rank. * Only one character can be the guild Leader. * Guilds must have a minimum of 5 ranks. More ranks can be added by the Leader, up to a maximum of 10 ranks. Rank names and privileges are customizable by the guild Leader. The privileges are: * Inviting players to the guild or removing them. * Promoting or demoting of members. * Viewing or speaking in Guild chat. * Viewing or speaking in the special Officer chat channel. * Editing public notes or viewing/editing of Officer notes. * Editing the guild Message of the Day or the Guild Information panel. Q: Why should I even join a guild?? A: Most people join guilds to seek out help on quest, instances, and even to get help attaining a certain armor piece you may want. But be cautious when inviting people to the group, because they might be going for the same reason you're going and might take the armor you want. =See Also= *For a list of guilds with pages on this wiki, see Category:Guilds. *For a list of Guilds organized by Realm, see Realms List and choose a Realm. *For information about the Guild List (window) in the World of Warcraft User Interface, see UI:Guild List. *For advice on making a guild page in WoWWiki, see . Guild Websites Guilds with websites may want to post their site name on this article's talk page with realm name for players seeking a guild. Category:Game Terms Guilds (Overview)